In the field of telephony services, there has been much improvement over the years concerning the routing and other treatment of telephony events. Telephony in general has become a computer-integrated service that can be practiced over a connection-oriented service network such as the well-known public-switched telephony network (PSTN), as well as over data-packet networks (DPN) such as the well-known Internet network. More recently telephony methods and techniques have been incorporated to function in a combination of connection-oriented and shared-bandwidth (DPN) networks.
However technically advanced a telephony system may be, it is still a goal of telephony providers as well as practitioners to experience a high-quality telephony service without incurring exponential costs related to provision of architecture, software, and other newly-advanced components. In a communication center environment, quality of service is critical. Routing flexibility and reliability are also highly important in achieving high quality of service to clients patronizing the center. Computer-Telephony-Integration (CTI) has enabled many improvements in the art of telephony.
In a CTI-enhanced communication system known to the inventor, intelligent routing is provided by a software application known as a transaction server (TS). Utilizing TS technologies, intelligent routing rules may be implemented both at agent level within the communication center itself (agent level routing) and in the realm of the external telephony network. In the latter case, agent-level routing may be performed at network level. Using this technology along with a separate dedicated network, information about callers attempting to contact the center may be passed to the center ahead of actual calls, thereby giving agents additional time to prepare for incoming calls on a call-to-call basis.
Interactive-voice-response technologies (IVR) may also be present and utilized both at network level and at agent level in communication centers known to the inventor. Integration with data networks has resulted in new voice formats such as voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), and others. Multi-capable communication centers, meaning that agents stationed therein interact with callers on either or both of a COST network and an IP network are known to the inventor. Also known are pure IP communication centers wherein there are no traditional COST connections required for agent's telephones. In this type of center, all calls, whether sourced from a COST network or from a data network, are handled utilizing LAN connected PCs and/or IP telephones.
In some communication centers, there are multiple tenants that share telephony resources for the purpose of serving separate customer bases. For example, two separate and distinct companies may share a call center for providing service advice to their respective customer bases. The tenants typically share the cost of telephony services including routing services and IVR services. A typical multi-tenant communication center has at least one LAN-connected agent working in the center for each tenant of the center, although this is not necessarily a requirement. One agent could represent more than one tenant. Hopefully, all calls arriving at the center and destined for a particular tenant are routed to the tenant's agent, or group of agents representing that tenant.
In a multi-tenant communication center as described above, routing software and IVR resources must be allocated or shared between all of the tenants. In many cases, multiple tenants of a single communication center are very different from one another in terms of products offered, nature of services provided, etc. Because all of the tenants share a common architecture including connected processors and other service machines, it becomes expensive to provide singular routing routines and personalized IVR services for each tenant. Therefore, generic routing routines and IVR services are typically provided tending to limit the quality of service experienced by clients calling into the center. The fact that the tenants share resources is not then necessarily transparent to the clients. Moreover, many possible routing preferences and IVR preferences desired by individual tenants that could be practiced on the architecture of the center are not implemented because of cost-sharing and equipment limitations.
Providing separate instances of routing software and IVR resources individually for each tenant of a multi-tenant communication center is not conventionally cost-effective. Similarly, it is not conventionally cost-effective to maintain a separate CTI link between a communication center or network switch and each of the tenants. Still, it is desired that individual tenants of a multi-tenant communication center share communication center resources, but still enjoy individual security and versatility with respect to servicing their clients.
What is clearly needed is a method and apparatus for providing shared secure and personalized telephony resources for all tenants subscribing to a multi-tenant communication center without requiring additional CTI links and other associated equipment.